1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a handicraft needle punch set used suitably in the field of handicrafts such as appliqué, where the needle punch set comprises a needle puncher and an assisting tool.
2. Description of the Related Art
Needle punching technique is employed typically in the manufacture of nonwoven cloth. In this technique, a plurality of webs made of fibers are first placed one after another and then, a needle is stuck through these webs so fibers from different webs will tangle with each other to put all of the webs into a single piece. Such a needle punching technique is used not only in the manufacture of nonwoven cloth but also in the field of felt art, for example, and proposals are made for needle punching tools, including one shown in JP-A-2004-308046, which comprises a plurality of needles attached to a grip member.
When the needle punching technique is used, first, a piece of felt which has a desired shape as a motif is placed on an appropriate sheet of cloth for example, and then, the needle is stuck through these cloth and felt a number of times, so that fibers of the felt will tangle with the fibers of the cloth, making an appliqué of the felt piece. The above mentioned JP document also teaches a support member for supporting the piece of felt when performing the needle punching. The support member has a brush-like structure, including a large number of fibriform members standing together so that their ends will form a supporting surface for the piece of felt. Such a structure makes it possible to improve operability in the needle punching work and increases the life of the needle since the structure allows sticking of the needle into the support member with a relatively small amount of force while ensuring that the needle will not be damaged upon contact with the fibriform members.
In the above-described conventional art, pieces of felt used in the needle punching art are typically cut out of a commercially available sheet of felt. However, this has been a problem when a large number of pieces are to be used for the felt work since cutting the pieces out of the sheets is time-consuming. In addition, after the pieces have been cut out, the reminder of the sheet has no use and has to be disposed as a waste, resulting in wasteful use of the resource.